Jacksonville native was found dead in his home on Saturday

Fans remembered Ryan Freel as a throwback baseball player, a guy who didn’t mind crashing headfirst into a wall or leaping into the stands if it meant making a catch.

But the people who knew him the best said that the highlights were just one part of Freel.

He was a friend, a father, a coach, a brother, and a son, a guy whose recent missions in life were to grow his local baseball organization and spend as much time as he could with his three young girls.

That’s how friends chose to remember Freel, 36, who died on Saturday in his Brookchase Lane residence from a self-inflicted shotgun wound.

His tenacious and all-out playing style made him one of the most visible players in baseball during an eight-year Major League Baseball career, six of those with Cincinnati, although the physical toll was substantial. Freel admitted to suffering numerous concussions during his baseball tenure.

A day after Freel’s death, tributes to the Jacksonville native continued to pour in at a steady pace. Freel’s Facebook page was filled with condolences, memories, bible verses and above all, shock, over a tragedy that left friends and fans across the country stunned.

Almost collectively, though, mourners chose to remember Freel’s life, and how a relentless work ethic carried an undersized 10th-round draft pick through 16 seasons of pro baseball, and brought him full-circle to enjoying life with his three daughters more than anything.

Those closest to Freel, like his best friend, Bryan Farford, said that his work ethic was unlike anything he’s seen.

“This is such an international sport, from Japan to the Dominican Republic, guys all over the world, and here you had a guy who was 5-10 at his very best, 175 pounds, from Jacksonville, who worked himself through the chain to get himself in the big leagues,” said Farford, 37, a teammate of Freel’s at Arlington Little League and later at Sandalwood.

“That’s a pretty tall order. Talent only gets you so far. He had the extra work ethic; that sealed the deal for him.”

Since retiring from professional baseball in 2010 following 16 seasons, Freel had returned to Jacksonville to embark on teaching the game to kids, something friends say that Freel was highly passionate about.

He founded Big League Dreams, a travel program with handpicked coaches whose ties to professional ball made it a thriving organization to play in.

He’d accepted a head coaching position at St. Joseph Academy last summer, but opted to step away from that to focus on growing BLD, said coach Derrick Gutierrez, a 1998 Sandalwood graduate. Gutierrez said that Freel’s focus was staying involved with the game through coaching youth baseball and that he was in a sense, reborn in doing that. The league would continue, Gutierrez, said, because Freel “would have wanted it to.”

“He was a professional, he always wanted to give back to the kids,” said Gutierrez, a 12th-round pick of Baltimore in 1998.

“He was always upbeat, laughing, giggling just like he was when he was on the big league field. That’s the way he taught the game.”

It was also just how Freel operated, with a desire to help wherever he could.

Charley Frank, Executive Director of the Reds Community Fund, which handles all of the team’s outreach initiatives, said that Freel was one of the most giving players that he’s ever dealt with, returning to help run camps and make appearances even though he wasn’t required to.

“We’ve never had another one like him, he was so good to us, so good to our kids, so good to our volunteers,” Frank said. “After he came once or twice, he’d come on his own, he’d just show up. He lifted our entire program up. I just can’t say enough good things about who he was.”

St. Augustine resident Zach Wedekind, 14, played for Freel’s BLD Reds. A lifelong Reds fan from Cincinnati, Wedekind was thrilled when he found out Freel was in town coaching youth baseball.

He made the Reds’ U14 team and said that Freel became far more than just a coach, often swapping text messages with him.

“He was like a big brother to me,” Wedekind said. “He just made my life better, with baseball, and made me a better person.”

Freel’s rise from local baseball star to the big leagues was something that people in the local baseball circuit still talk about.

A baseball junkie, Freel was such a good athlete that he made an impression on anyone he came across in whatever sport he was involved in.

“He went 110 mph every time he went out,” said friend Alvin Parker, a 1996 Sandalwood graduate. “One day on the football field, he didn’t even play football (consistently) and he put on pads one time and just shellacked everybody out there. He was good at everything he did. He was a tender-hearted, hard-nosed person.”

Freel played at both Sandalwood and Englewood in high school, and was picked in the 13th round in 1994 by St. Louis. Freel didn’t sign and went to Tallahassee Community College for a season before being drafted by Toronto in the 10th round of the 1995 draft.

“We’ve always had a background together, I was always second team all-state and he was always first team all-state,” said Providence coach Mac Mackiewitz. “Those years (in college and pro baseball) I really got to know him. You know, a lot of guys who go high school, college, pros may take it easy when the y get there. He did the exact opposite. He made it and was just playing relentless. He fought for every out. I always encouraged my guys, especially my smaller guys, to watch him.”

Freel had a couple of scrapes with the law, pleading guilty to a drunken driving charge in 2005 and then being arrested in January 2006 for disorderly intoxication. Freel later said that he had given up drinking, and friends said that he matured noticeably over the years, as his focus shifted into being an ambassador to baseball and being a father.

“One thing I would tell anybody is how good of a dad he really was to those girls,” Farford said. “His ability to discipline them, get them to listen to him and the adoration they had for him was so apparent. He loved those girls unconditionally. He really was a good dad.”